In Burma, press freedom remains an illusion

Just ahead of this weekend's highly anticipated Burma
by-elections, opposition icon Aung San Suu Kyi today denounced
the vote as not "free and fair." Indeed, Thein Sein government's
harassment of opposition media in the run-up to the polls raises disturbing
questions about the country's reputed new democratic direction after decades of
repressive military rule.

The Press Scrutiny and Registration Division (PSRD), the
Burmese Ministry of Information's censorship arm, has in recent weeks summoned
and reprimanded the editors of two opposition-aligned newspapers, D-Wave and the Rakhine Nationalities
Development Party's (RNDP) journal, for articles deemed overly critical of the
government, according
to Mizzima, an exile-run news agency.

D-Wave was warned
for publishing a political cartoon that depicted the PSRD as a chain restraining
a news publication slugged "press freedom" from reaching clouds labeled
"democratic sky." The RNDP journal was reprimanded for publishing a February 29
article entitled "From a Green Military Uniform Government to a
Yellow-Skirt Democracy," which playfully poked at the recent transition
from military to what at best can be called quasi-civilian rule.

Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) party
have campaigned in part on the notion that Burma needs greater press freedom. Earlier
this month, she told
Radio Free Asia that government officials had censored a segment of one of
her campaign speeches before it was aired on state-controlled media. The banned
passage was critical of the previous military junta's abuse of laws to repress
the population. At her press
conference Friday, she said irregularities went "beyond what is acceptable
for democratic elections."

Her speech violated an Election Commission list of forbidden
campaign topics, including any speech that "tarnishes the dignity of the
State," "split the armed forces or tarnishes its good name," or "disparages or
otherwise harms national longevity, sovereignty, and ethnic unity," according
to an English translation of the Burmese language order received by CPJ. The
nine-point list of banned topics has effectively muted critical debate on the
campaign trail and as a result blunted any hard-hitting news coverage of the
pre-election period.

After this weekend's by-elections, the next big signpost on
Burma's reform path is expected to be passage of a new Printing Press and
Publication Law. Ministry of Information officials have said the proposed
legislation will codify press freedoms and responsibilities, and replace the
PSRD censorship body with a new "Committee for Press Freedom and Raising
Ethical Standards."

Government authorities held two conferences, in January and
March, on the promised media reforms, but participants left the meetings
ambivalent about the government's intentions and concerned that the new
legislation will merely employ different tools of suppression, similar to the
legal restrictions on the press in neighboring countries like Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam.

There has been no indication that the regime intends to
overturn the various repressive laws on the books, including the harsh Electronics
Act that allows for jail terms for sending unauthorized information over
the Internet. Authorities frequently have used the law to repress and imprison
journalists. Those concerns were ironically underscored when the PSRD banned a
critical commentary about the media reform conference written by veteran
journalist Ludu Sein Win. The banned article was later published by The Irrawaddy
exile-run magazine and website.

To be sure, Burma's media freedom situation has eased with
the release of at least 10 jailed journalists and the relaxing of censorship of
certain previously banned topics. It is also noteworthy that prominent media
editors in exile, including Irrawaddy's
Aung Zaw and the Democratic Voice of Burma's Aye Chan Naing -- both steadfast
critics of the old military order -- have recently been granted short-stay
visas to return to their homeland for the first time in decades.

But there are just as many signs, witnessed in persistent
censorship and harassment of the local media, that President Thein Sein's
commitment to greater press freedom is still more rhetoric than reality.
Indeed, journalists and editors quoted in news reports have expressed concerns
that the marginally greater space they now enjoy will abruptly close if and
when the government is rewarded for its democratic progress with the removal of
Western sanctions and allocation of financial aid and assistance.

While Thein Sein's quasi-civilian government has embraced the
outline of democracy -- witnessed in the spectacle of Suu Kyi campaign posters
and voters feeding ballot boxes at this weekend's by-elections -- there is
still clearly resistance to the substance.

CPJ Senior Southeast Asia Representative Shawn W. Crispin is based in Bangkok, where he is a reporter and editor for Asia Times Online. He has led CPJ missions throughout the region, and is the author of the CPJ special report, "Vietnam’s press freedom shrinks despite open economy."